Road to Kosovo

Mason fire truck finally heading to Europe

The first time Mason Mayor Leon Clark
tried to deliver the fire truck to Kosovo, he found himself on the side
of the road with smoke billowing from the engine.

“We got as far as Brighton (outside
Detroit) and the truck overheated,” Clark said. “We found out later that
it had a blown head gasket.”

That was in August, two years — and one
long and winding road — after the idea was first kindled to give one of
Masonīs out-of-service trucks to the beleaguered Southeast European
nation. The city seems to have a fondness for Kosovo: shortly after its
civil war, eight refugee families moved to Mason. Jakup Jahiri, a Kosovo
native, came to the city two years ago to visit his son and was amazed
at the amount of firefighting equipment Mason had when his own city had
so little.

“[Jahiri] said, ‘You must sleep very
peacefully at night to have this amount of trucks and equipment for the
size of town that you have,’” said Mason Fire Chief Kerry Minshall.
“That led to the discussion about what they do and don’t have over there
and we decided to see what we could do to get this donated to them.”

After a truck passes the tender age of
25, the National Fire Protection Association recommends it be retired to
the fire truck graveyard. The 1984 Ford Grumman had been out of
commission and replaced by a new truck two years ago. When
Clark took his idea to the City Council, he was approved — as long as
he could find a way to get it at no cost to the city. So, a fundraising
effort was set up, first at the Mason A & W restaurant, which
grossed $1,700 for the delivery, and afterward an anonymous member of
the Rotary Club of Mason donated another $1,000.

Soon after receiving the donations, Clark
contacted the Denton Humanitarian Assistance Program in South Carolina,
which helps U.S.-based non-governmental sources (like a mayor wanting
to donate a fire truck to a European country) transport humanitarian aid
at little or no cost to the donor. In this case, they helped find space
on a C-141 military aircraft to transport the truck.

The brief application involves the donor
making the case that the items to be donated will provide legitimate and
necessary aid to those on the receiving end and is not just a couple of
boxes full of drugs. After the application was approved, the truck was
ready to fly from the Selfridge Air National Guard Base in Harrison
Township, 100 miles away— which brings us back to the side of 1-96 in
August. No auto repair company in the area responded to Clark’s request
for assistance, so the big red vehicle was hoisted up and dragged all
the way back to Mason for the repairs.

After several rejections, Clark reached
Mark Hilderbrandt, owner of Done Right Auto and RV in Mason, who
stripped down the engine and did $2,000 worth of repairs for free. Two
months after the initial catastrophe, Clark is again ready to try the
delivery. The truck will be loaded onto a military transfer plane this
Saturday and flown straight to Vitina, Kosovo — a municipality with
almost 47,000 people and fire vehicles that are more than 40 years old.

This time around, Clark, along with three
other Mason firefighters, are accompanying the truck across the
Atlantic. But the donations don’t stop there — they are also donating
lightly used supplies, including coats, pants, boots, gloves, helmets,
hoses, exhaust fans and a set of jaws of life. Clark and his team are
going to spend some time in Vitina after the delivery showing the local
firefighters how to use some of the equipment and making sure everything
gets delivered intact — and with no breakdowns.

“In retrospect, I think it’s better that
the breakdown happened here where we have better resources to get it
repaired,” Minshall says. “I would much rather deal with the problem
than send them something that they would have to get fixed.”